The National Interest - A sigh for versailles

Reinforcing Americans' reluctance to engage in entanglements abroad
was the suicidal behavior of the European imperialists, who locked
themselves in a death struggle starting in 1914. For the first year of the
Great War, Americans once again congratulated themselves and their
forebears for having left that benighted continent; by consensus the
national interest indicated adhering to the advice of Washington and
Jefferson about eschewing alliances.

But the twentieth century was not the eighteenth or early nineteenth.
American commercial and financial interests had grown tremendously, making
the United States more dependent than ever on foreign markets. American
merchants demanded the right to trade with the belligerents; American
bankers insisted on being able to lend in London and Paris and Berlin.
Woodrow Wilson wanted to keep clear of the conflict and tried for a time
to rally his compatriots to neutral thinking as well as a neutral policy.
But he could not resist the calls for belligerent trade and belligerent
loans, and before long the tentacles of capitalism began to draw the
United States into the war. Because the British had a better fleet than
the Germans, most American trade, and the financing that funded the trade,
flowed to Britain and France, making the United States a de facto member
of the Allied powers by 1916. Germany recognized the situation, and in
early 1917 declared war on American shipping. Wilson responded with a
request for a formal war declaration, which Congress granted.

At the time, few in Congress or outside it questioned that the American
national interest required defending American vessels and American
nationals against German attack. Some, however, did question whether U.S.
participation in the war required putting U.S. troops on the ground in
Europe. "Good Lord! You're not going to send soldiers over
there, are you?" queried a shocked senator of a War Department
spokesman. The War Department did send the troops, which helped break the
back of Germany's desperate final offensive.

But what else they accomplished was open to doubt. The British and French
knew what
they
were fighting for (although the rest of the world did not until Lenin
leaked the secret treaties that spelled out the Allies'
imperialistic war aims). The Americans were far less sure of their own
purposes, not least because Wilson had waffled all over the landscape of
politics and diplomacy. At various times he talked of being too proud to
fight, then of achieving peace without victory, then of making the world
safe for democracy. His Fourteen Points seemed rather many, with some too
vague and others too specific. In any case, the British and French
demonstrated at the postwar peace conference that they would have nothing
to do with Wilson's airy abstractions. Germany had lost, and
Germany would pay—in treasure, territory, colonies, and markets.
Wilson could have his precious League of Nations, the proto–world
government he hoped would prevent another such war. But he would have to
make of it what he could.

Which turned out to be nothing at all. Even more than Wilson, Americans
were confused as to why they entered the war. The only national interest
that seemed directly threatened was the right to trade with belligerents.
But the British violated America's neutral rights as consistently,
if less egregiously, than the Germans (who, short on surface ships, had to
resort to U-boat torpedoes to enforce a blockade). Was there an American
national interest in preventing another European war? On this point, as on
any other meaningful topic touching the national interest, the answer
turned on the cost. Of course, it would be to America's benefit for
Europe to remain at peace, but would the benefit outweigh the cost of an
indefinite commitment to enforce the mandates of this new League of
Nations? Did Americans wish to play policemen to the world?

The Senate said no in twice rejecting the Treaty of Versailles. Wilson
summoned a simple majority for the treaty, but not the two-thirds
supermajority ratification required. Under the rules specified by the
Constitution, the Senate declared that membership in the League of Nations
was not in the American national interest. Whether it really was not in
the national interest, time would tell.